Does anyone else use Zotero to backup and sync their private documents?

msleumer
For a long time I only used Zotero to store and archive unchanging bibliographic sources. Then one day it occurred to me that I could use it to store the manuscript that I am writing while I'm writing it.
I made a new blank item and attached my manuscript. At the end of the day I close my documents, sync, go home, and sync again. Zotero automatically backs up my work to the webDAV server and then to my home computer, and I can casually keep working at home, then sync before I go back to work. I now do this with all running documents that I'm working on - I used to email them to myself.
I was going to recommend the same procedure to someone who has two offices that he works in on different days, so that he would be able to keep working seamlessly regardless of where he is. But I'm not sure if Zotero is meant to act as a file backup system. It doesn't have versioning, for one thing, plus sync could go the wrong way if there was an error.
Of course there are other programs that handle sync and backup, but does anyone just lean on Zotero like I do?
  • mronkko
    I thought about this, but to my understanding Zotero does not store previous versions of the documents. And if it does, these are not easily accessible from the user interface. In my opinion, Zotero would just an additional an unnecessary layer: Why not just use the webdav share directly?

    I personally use DropBox for what you describe. The advantage in that is that it stores also version history, which is one of the key advantage of having regular backups. With DropBox, you can also access the files over web.
  • msleumer
    Yes, the lack of versioning is definitely a problem... makes using Zotero a little risky.
    However, I can't use DropBox here in China, so that's out for me. I do enjoy being able to back up my manuscripts, notes, homework assignments and all my sources with one click.
  • adamsmith
    I think version history is absolutely crucial for back-up. You just don't want to incur the chance of having a corrupted document but not being able to go back far enough. There are so many sync services like DropBox, there has got to be one that isn't banned in China?
    Alternatively, you could in addition back-up locally onto an external hard drive with a program that has version history.
  • msleumer
    Yeah, you guys are right, I should switch to a more robust backup system. I do post backups to my external hard drive once a week or so, but I need an automated system that would also work on my Linux Virtualbox... I'll look into it.
  • adamsmith
    Linux supports rssync - so that should be easy enough, no?
  • mronkko
    For Linux, I recommend back in time http://backintime.le-web.org/ It is easy to set up and works well. Your external hard drive should be formatted to ext3 or some other format that supports hard links. It does not work with fat formatted drives.
  • msleumer
    Thank you for the ideas - I will try them.
  • adamsmith
    note that backintime is a gui frontend for rsync (which I would second as a recommendation). All back-up systems for Mac and Linux rely on that - if you're code savvy rsync and a cron job does essentially the same thing for you as backintime (or the mac time machine).

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